Single-interest Voter

I suppose I should consider myself lucky to have so many friends of such high moral fiber. Friends who never tell a lie. Friends who never speak ill of someone behind their back. Friends who never fudge on their taxes. Who don’t break the speed limit on a dark deserted highway. Who don’t tear the tags off their mattresses.  Friends who would find a roll of $100 bills on the sidewalk, pick it up, and run ads in the newspaper, radio, and TV – at their own expense – until they found the rightful owner; and not even accept a reward when they find them.  Friends who would knowingly punish this country for not sharing their “morality” by allowing a horde of racist, jingoistic, misogynistic, money-grubbing thugs to run it rather than cast their votes to keep it from happening, because the only other choice is “almost as bad.”

But, I don’t feel all that lucky.

Maybe it’s simple jealousy that I’m just not as good as these people.  Maybe it’s because I think that, even if I had such pristine, angelic ideals, and I thought I might be able to survive the punishment myself, I couldn’t bring myself to put my grandchildren and other people’s grandchildren through the misery. Maybe it’s my fear that these thugs would bring about the very end of civilization as we know it – coming in the form of those mushroom clouds we all learned to fear back in the 60s.  It must have worked on me. I don’t relish the idea of living in a hole, eating earthworms for the next decade.  I’m selfish like that. I like to be able to take something out of the freezer, nuke it for two minutes, and enjoy a meal in air-conditioned comfort while watching people on TV talking about how terrible everything is in this country. But, not my friends. They are compelled – called by God, if you will – to teach the rest of us a lesson. No cost is too high for them.

There are many single-interest voters in this country. I have chastised them myself, before realizing that I am one as well.  There are those who will vote against the Democratic nominee, if only because they truly believe said nominee will come in the night and take their guns away. They may need those guns, while living in that hole, to shoot something tastier than red worms.  There are those (not enough) who will vote against the Republican nominee because they know, in their hearts, that he doesn’t share their religious conviction – only pandering to them to get their votes before showing his hand once elected.  There are those who truly hate people who don’t look like they do, and will vote for the one who will do the most damage to those “other people.” There are those I mentioned above, who won’t vote for either, because neither of the major candidates is good enough to match their utopian ideals. They, no doubt, know that by doing this the greater of the two evils they perceive could ascend to the throne – but, on balance, they don’t recognize that much difference between the two; and their dignity is more important to them than the survival of the country, and its people.

And then, there are single-interest voters such as myself – not voting FOR anyone so much as voting AGAINST the one who represents everything my 60+ years has taught me to despise; someone who I’m sure would tear down everything I believe this country is supposed to represent, while building monuments to himself to rival those of the Pharos. With neon.  Someone who would guarantee that nobody who represents the ideals of the angelic ones will ever again get close to the office he would redefine, if elected.  Someone who, through his own arrogance, having the power at his disposal, could end us all in a tantrum.

So, yeah, you can call me a single-interest voter.  I’m just not good enough to be anything else.